Spiritual Warfare Teaching Series | Rev Allan Shalm

How to win the waging war

Truth is, there can be lots of things going on in our Christian walks but without power. But there is a spiritual war out there — an invisible but highly critical one — that we need to start using what we actually have in us when God filled us with the Holy Spirit.

For close to a month, veteran minister and missionary Allan Shalm stripped the war down to its essence, and drilled Tabernacle of Joy with practical tips on how to wage the war in the spirit. Hint: if you get prayer right, you get everything else right.

Take it as this: Intercession is not the highest form of prayer, and neither does shouting or screaming our heads off shed any hint of effectiveness. A higher form is authoritative prayer. It is when we don’t just ask God to move a mountain. We speak to the mountain and it be moved. The Bible said so — check Matthew 17:20.

Now, how about “Can a nation be born in a day?” Rev Shalm taunted and answered. “Why not!” God is in fact more willing to give than we are to receive. But the only thing that is stopping God is that He is not willing for many a revival to be born when the ‘mother’, the church, does not have enough strength to push it through — they will become stillborn like was said in 2 Kings 19. If we want children, conceived them, but don’t want the pain of travail, that will be “a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy” (v.3). That’s when the world needs somebody to intercede on their behalf. Here comes the turning point in Rev Shalm’s message in Hosea 10:12.

It is when we don’t just seek God, but we press on at it till He sends the rain. It is to not just pray, but pray until (fill in the blanks). It’s to not just pray in words, but to watch and pray in the spirit with all perseverance, says Rev Shalm. He then brings the analogy together with Matthew 26:40-41: if a guard on duty for 12 hours, and did all his work for 11 hours and fell asleep during his last hour when the enemy managed to break in, is he of any good? The answer is no. He failed at his job. It is the same in the spiritual realm, but in order for us to succeed at our job in prayer, there is an easier way.

Rev Shalm proposes that in order to win this war, the only way is that we come from a position of strength than weakness. He said “The way we know what satan is going to do next is through prayer. God will reveal in prayer.” When we pray, we move out the kingdom of satan – the prince of the air – and plant the flag of God’s Kingdom on the territory and give it a new leadership. It’s only that, too often, we allow circumstances to rule prayer out as impossible — that’s when we give ground to the devil.

The only way we will lose the war is that we neglect prayer. “A lot of people don’t reject prayer, they neglect it. You hardly notice it. It’s a little less here, a little less there,” he said. “So I set a bare minimum. Every day for the rest of my life, I told myself I will pray one hour, fast one day for the week. That’s how I am ready to meet situations and not be ambushed all the time.”

Authoritative prayer is not chore at all. You can climb a mountain but I am going to speak to the mountain to get it out of the way.

Pray single-mindedly.

And watch in prayer.

Not stopping before the finishing line.

Go all the way.

You cannot drift into a prayer life.

You work into it.

This is step number 1, but it is a giant leap you’re making if you get this right.